Following a successful 2022 Connect at the Glasshouse, we moved the event to the Convene Venue at 1221 Avenue of the Americas, across the street from Fox News. This was my first experience working at a Convene property, and is by no means my last.
Convene venues are becoming popular for conferences like Connect because they don’t require a room block when reserving meeting space. Convene properties come mostly furnished with built-in event technology including sound, lighting, cameras, video screens and digital signage. This can cut both ways, however, because with great power comes great responsibility and the tools don’t make the carpenter.
The highlight of 1221 is an LED ribbon that wraps around three sides of the keynote room. At over 38,000 pixels wide, this high-density small-pixel curved LED wall is a sight to behold. In the right hands, this thing could be a stunner. That said, the folks running this venue came up short in their ability to push content to the screen and what we got was slides in PIPs against a static background. Kind of like driving a Ferrari to the grocery store.
That said, this venue did have some incredible tech and the crew ran it well. We had a successful keynote and live stream, the breakouts ran without a hitch and the food was great!
